Health Secretary Joseph K. Villagomez yesterday said the need for a bigger hospital becomes obvious with the rise in the population of the CNMI.<\/p>\n
A plan to construct a new Department of Health building has been in the pipeline, and he hopes that the government will make it a priority.<\/p>\n
A meeting has been set for next week to discuss the project, he said.<\/p>\n
“It’s part of the CIP (Capital Improvement Projects) and is one of the top 20 projects. I hope that it will go easily. We’re meeting next week to finalize the projects,” he said.<\/p>\n
The new building, planned to be constructed in Navy Hill, will house the department’s administration office and the Division of Public Health.<\/p>\n
The department’s present site will then be freed up for the hospital’s use.<\/p>\n
DPH is occupying about two-thirds of the hospital building’s ground floor.<\/p>\n
Once DPH is relocated, the hospital will also be renovated.<\/p>\n
Villagomez said the renovation will not only expand health care services but tests the soundness of the 12-year-old structure as well.<\/p>\n
He said the hospital has survived strong typhoons and earthquakes, and the possibility that its structural foundation may have been weakened could not be ruled out.<\/p>\n
“It’s already a 12-year-old facility and we’re using it for a population that is three to four times higher than what it was intended for,” Villagomez said.<\/p>\n
The hospital receives an estimated 10,000 patients per month. That’s about half the ideal number it was to serve when it was built in 1986.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Health Secretary Joseph K. Villagomez yesterday said the need for a bigger hospital becomes obvious with the rise in the population of the CNMI.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44675\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}